Austin Arrington

LAND SCAPE—LaChapelle’s Eye on Big Oil

The Paul Kasmin Gallery on Tenth Ave. in Chelsea is now hosting LAND SCAPE, an exhibition of new photographs by David LaChapelle. The exhibition opened last Friday, and runs until March 1^st.

LAND SCAPE is comprised of two series: Refineries and Gas Stations, both of which serve as commentaries on the social and environmental consequences of a petroleum-fueled consumer society. The photos are taken from handcrafted scaled models of Big Oil’s industrial infrastructure—complete with cardboard, hair curlers, egg cartons, straws, pens, cans, and other bits of found and recycled materials. In viewing this architecture of junk the connection between peak oil, the continuous production of garbage, and humanity’s growing ecological footprint is exposed.

The Refineries series draws the viewer in with its captivating otherworldliness, while simultaneously evoking a feeling of disgust—most likely at the synthetic and destructive nature of consumerism. Take for example, the image of a blue energy drink guzzling out of a refinery into the water supply. The juxtaposition of industrial oil infrastructure with household objects makes it strikingly clear that the things we buy and consume are founded upon an unsustainable oil dependency.

A pen viewed in a LaChapelle photo is no longer an innocent writing device—it takes on a number of social, environmental, and ethical concerns. By seeing the pen as part of an oil refinery, we are drawn to consider the impact of our own consumerism. We must begin to ask ourselves, how did this object get before me? What materials went in to making it? How much greenhouse gases were emitted through its transportation? What are the ecological consequences of me buying pens in the future?

The Gas Station series was shot in the rainforest of Maui. The lighting in these photos is surreal and disturbing—drawing out tensions between the plant life and fueling stations. The organic material seems to be slowly overtaking the man-made structures, while at the same time representing the very source of our fuel addiction.

Before breaking out in the world of fine-art photography, LaChapelle cut his teeth as a commercial photographer. His first job as a photographer was at Interview magazine, at the request of Andy Warhol. He has shot for The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, The Face, Vanity Fair, Vogue Italia, and Vogue Paris. In 1995 he shot the famous “kissing sailors” piece for Diesel, which was one of the first public advertisements depicting homosexual kissing. His earlier photos of celebrities and models (the kind with long legs, not the kind you build) have a glam “Barbie world” affect—a synthetic quality that also runs through his current work. LaChapelle seems to have even physically taken on the aesthetic of his photos…let’s just say that he looks way too young for 50.

The opening looked something like a hybrid between Zoolander and a Fellini film—a circus of rooms packed with attractive people hobnobbing, trying to get a shot with the artist, a few kooks dressed like Final Fantasy characters, representatives from the contemporary art intelligentsia stroking their chins, and a sprinkling of celebrity (such as transgender model Amanda Lenore).

Of course, most art openings have an element of superficiality—this scene is nothing new. LaChappele’s work is interesting in that it seems to embrace superficiality and artificiality (whether in the art world, the media, or in consumer trends) in order to turn these ideas around, and pose interesting questions about society and the world we live in.

LAND SCAPE is an exhibition that makes you think about things that are easy to sweep under the rug. It offers a hallucinatory glimpse at the consequences of our consumption and disregard for natural resources as a society, while offering stunning visual imagery and craftsmanship to wrap your head around.

Standout Urban Trends from the BMW Guggenheim Lab

by Austin Arrington

From 2011-2013, the mobile BMW Guggenheim Lab studied life in modern cities, offered free programs and workshops, and implemented projects across New York City, Berlin, and Mumbai. 100 Urban Trends emerged from the Lab as a database for the most talked-about trends in city life. Participatory City, a recent exhibit at the Guggenheim, provided an overview for the major trends explored by the project.

The Lab teams were interdisciplinary, and included experts in the fields of urbanism, architecture, art, design, science, technology, education, and sustainability. What follows is a sample of standout trends from the Lab’s work in NYC.

Altruism may be a surprising trend for anyone who thinks of NYC as a hardened, “get yours” type of city. “Altruism” means showing concern for the wellbeing of others in a selfless way (even at cost to oneself). During Love Night, psychologists and neuroeconomics experts attempted to design environments that could inspire even the most wolfish of Wall Street to act decently. The idea is that design combined with citizen action can encourage friendly behavior in daily life.

Bike politics takes a critical look at the debate on bike infrastructure in cities—covering topics such as traffic laws, cyclist fatalities, and the need for more bike lanes. During the Mobility in Cities event, Benoit Jacob, head of BMW’s division on sustainable transportation, met with New York City Department of Transportation chief of staff Margarat Newman. The two brainstormed on the future of urban mobility, exploring new possibilities for public transportation, cars, and bikes.

Evolutionary infrastructure looks at modalities of architecture and city planning that allow for natural and artificial systems to work effectively together. Engineered and natural processes are viewed as reciprocal evolutionary forces. Michael Manfredi and Marion Weiss from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design led a workshop on evolutionary infrastructure, with the aim of discovering renewed potential for mega-utopias.

Hacking the city refers to the capacity of urban inhabitants to transform city systems through informal actions. Sociologist Saskia Sassen came up with the idea, in order to show how open-source, grassroots participation can help make cities more habitable and humane. The idea is to subvert the meaning of hacking from technological to humanist. Perhaps dog-walkers, old ladies on stoops, and other vigilant community members are preferable to the most advanced surveillance technologies.

Resilience is a city’s ability to cope with and recover from hardship. While it can mean different things, often a resilient city is able to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change. It goes without saying that NYC’s response to Superstorm Sandy falls under this category. A panel discussion took place on different ways that New Yorkers can actively respond to environmental stress in the coming years.

Urban psychology studies the effects of city life on mental health and wellbeing, looking into areas such as stress, overstimulation, anxiety, relationship to space, and urban fatigue. Journalist and Lab member Charles Montgomery gave a talk (Comfort, Cities, and the Science of Happiness), arguing that similar components go into designing happy, sustainable, and resilient cities.

Some have criticized the BMW Guggenheim Lab for being overly conceptual and having little impact on actual urban existence. During its time in the East Village, some residents complained that the ideas being explored by the Lab where already in effect in the area (such as community gardens, locally owned art galleries, and small businesses). Critics said that the Lab might have done more good in a community lacking the resources of the LES.

While the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s work was highly academic, it’s relevancy can’t be blown off easily. During the Lab’s stint in NYC, it explored and engaged with critical issues for New Yorkers. However, the extent to which city-dwellers will be able to apply what was learned through the Lab in daily life remains to be seen.

Christopher Wool at the Guggenheim

by Austin Arrington

Christopher Wool’s self-titled retrospective runs until January 22^nd at the Guggenheim. The exhibition fills the coils of the museum’s rotunda with a large sample of Wool’s work since the ‘80s—including digitally warped sikscreens, text pieces, photographs, and nods to No Wave and graffiti.

Wool had his breakthrough between ’86 and ’87, when he started using paint rollers incised with floral patterns and geometric designs. Like Warhol, Wool consciously allows the mechanized processes of reproduction to become a part of his art.

Due to the large body of similar pattern pieces done in the past decades, Wool’s early work may come off as somewhat unoriginal and uninspired—something out of Target’s Pop Art section.

However, Wool is a versatile artist that remains relevant today. In good form, he continues to question and tweak art through an applied knowledge of technology. Nowadays, Wool uses digital processing to warp the scale, color, and resolution of his paintings.

In the “gray paintings” done in the past decade, faded black enamel on linen reveals subtle tensions of composition and space. Wool is the kind of artist whose art tries to say something about what it is. He describes the gray paintings as an attempt to harness the forces of doubt and repression into creativity.

The blocky and disjuncted letter paintings stand out as an example of the exhibition’s ‘meta-ness’. In pieces like Trouble (TRBL), Wool maintains the form and order of language, while stripping away letters and manipulating spacing. The overall effect is tense and somewhat troubling.

Wool doesn’t shy away from pop culture references either. In Apocalypse Now, he samples a quote from the film of the same name, coming up with the post-conceptual mantra, “SELL THE HOUSE SELL THE CAR SELL THE KIDS.” The price realized for the piece at Christie’s was $26,485,000.

The retrospective also includes lo-fi photographs of bleak urban environments, taken in New York and across Europe. In the 90’s Wool would find a way to reform his older work through photography—by taking a photo of a finished picture, transposing it to silkscreen, and reassigning it to a new canvas. He also creates hybrids by manually reworking the doubles.

Of course, Wool isn’t without his share of critics. Dave Hickey called his work an “academically palatable brand of designer-punk.” And Adriane Searle from The Guardian recently tweeted, “He. Is. Just. Not. That. Good.”

It’s not hard to find beef with Wool’s work—whether you think it’s pretentious, dry, or just mediocre. I won’t be the last one to say that he’s a tad overrated. However, it’s important to keep in mind context.

Wool reinvigorated painting when he broke out, by helping make the medium relevant again to avant-garde practice in the late 20^th century. He also inherits and synthesizes notable techniques from the American artistic tradition—such as Abstract Expressionism’s painterly gesture, Pop Art’s use of reproductive technologies, and using language a la Conceptual Art from the ‘70s.

As you walk up the Guggenheim’s ramp, traversing Wool’s artistic phases—notice two things. Firstly, Wool is an artist who is highly aware of the time he lives in (as well as his place in art history, channeling Warhol and Pollock). Secondly, he takes chances, and chances are the lifeblood of art.

For more information on hours or tickets visit Guggenheim’s website here.

Christopher Wool — Trouble. 1980. Enamel and acrylic on aluminum.

Design and Violence—MoMA’s online experiment

by Austin Arrington

boxcutter — Boxcutter—tool or weapon? Photo credit: HomeSpot HQ

We are often accustomed to think about design in light, happy terms. Design is a way to shape the built environment in beautiful and functional ways. However, design can also be viewed as a creative act of destruction. Design and Violence, an online curatorial project at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is currently exploring this relationship.

In the 1971 book, Design for the Real World,Victor Papanek writes, “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them.” Papanek was a designer and educator who advocated for social and ecological responsibility in the design of products, tools, and community infrastructures.

Designers, whether architects, fashion gurus, or web developers, create new ways for people to interface with reality. In doing so, they play a major role in reconfiguring society and culture.

There are two main questions posed by Design and Violence. How is violence embedded in design? And how does design impact society’s idea of violence?

Design and Violence is organized by Paolo Antonelli, Senior Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA; Jamer Hunt, Director, graduate program in Transdisciplinary Design, Parsons The New School for Design; and Kate Carmody, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, MoMA.

The curators invite experts from a wide range of fields (science, literature, philosophy, journalism, and politics) to comment and theorize on the relationship between design objects and societal violence.

The project defines violence as “a manifestation of the power to alter circumstances, against the will of the other and to their detriment.”

One example of such a manifestation of power is gentrification—in which entire communities are displaced through interdependent socioeconomic and cultural shifts in design.

The curators at Design and Violence have mostly collected objects designed after 2001, to signify the paradigm shift that occurred after the 9/11 attacks. One case study was performed on the box cutter/utility knife, due to its role in the 9/11 plane hijackings.

Other concepts that have been explored by the project include the global shift from symmetrical to asymmetric warfare, as well as the development of cyber-warfare.

There are seven thematic categories through which the curators organize objects—Hack/Infect: disrupting the rules of the system; Constrain: binding, blocking, and distorting; Stun: causing blunt trauma; Penetrate: infiltrate the boundaries, breaching; Manipulate/Control: drawing into the realm of violence with suasion; Intimidate: promising damage and death; and Explode: annihilating visibly and completely.

The most mundane of objects can be the subject of a Design and Violence case study. Take a look at Daan van den Berg’s Merrick Lamp. According to the curators, ‘virus’ is a versatile term that can mean an infecting agent for either biological life or computer files. This fact led van den Berg to hack CAD files, 3-D printing a mutated IKEA lamp named after “Elephant Man” Joseph Carey Merrick.

Elephant man — Joseph Merrick, the inspiration for van den Berg’s Merrick Lamp.

Andrew Blauvelt, Senior Curator of Design, Research, and Publishing at the Walker Art Center, calls the Merrick Lamp an act of “aesthetic terrorism.” It serves as a subversive commentary on the industrial homogeneity perpetuated by corporations like IKEA.

The Design and Violence website also acts as a forum for design experts to critique each other’s ideas. For example, the Republic of Salivation by Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta is a project that imagines a dystopian future of food shortages, rationing, and synthetic feeding devices. Philosopher and sustainability advocate John Thackara recently critiqued the Republic of Salivation, on the basis that the global food crisis can be solved in more holistic, environmentally conscious ways.

Design and Violence is an ongoing experiment, with no definite end scheduled. The second phase of the project, currently under development, is its Google Earth extension. This phase will enable users to locate the physical location of each object within the collection, allowing for more traditional viewing of the artifacts.

Green Roofs and the Science of Sustainable Design

by Austin Arrington

Perfecting urban green roofs for their environmental and social benefits is a good example of where science and design meet.

The benefits of green roofs include insulation, reduced energy use, the removal of air pollutants and green house gases, increased roof lifespan, reduced heat stress, stormwater runoff management, beautification, and improved health.

There are two types of green roofs—extensive and intensive. Extensive green roofs have a soil depth of 1”- 5,” and are planted with sedums and short grasses. Intensive green roofs need at least one foot of soil and can be vegetated with trees, shrubs, and perennials.

Biology PhD candidate at York University in Toronto Scott McIvor has questioned the performance of sedum to absorb water and promote biodiversity, claiming that plants adapted to local conditions work better.

Sedum doesn’t absorb water as efficiently as some native species, while it is useful for lowering the building energy requirements of air-conditioning and heating.

Determining which green roofs plants best support biodiversity requires finding the right soil composition for microorganisms to live in. This is an ongoing question scientists are exploring.

Figuring out how to best integrate sedum with other plants, to maximize the potential benefits of a green roof, is where design comes in. Producing a green roof for rainwater run-off and climate management requires creative and efficient design.

Alive Structures is a company of landscape designers and environmentalists based out of Brooklyn. They do residential, community, and educational green roof and garden projects across the five boroughs. Their green roofs often integrate locally grown sedum mats with native plants.

Part of what makes a particular landscape architecture piece interact well with its environment is its artistic quality—a design for beauty as well as function.

I learned this from a friend and gardener, who taught me that working with plants is an art, as much as working with musical notes, letters, or pictures.

The shape and placement of plants produces a wide array of feelings in us, and can contribute dynamically to how we interpret the city’s architecture.

Of course, as a green roof is a part of a whole building, it must also function in support of the people that work or live within that building. One of the most present benefits of green roofs to urban dwellers is the chance to interact outdoors with plants.

Being outdoors and spending time around plants have both been shown to correlate with increased wellbeing, health, and social functioning. This makes sense, as the design function of humans is to actively interact with our environment.

Rooftops play an important role in New York City’s culture and architecture. The conscious Manhattanite is aware of the city on multiple levels—horizontal, vertical, urbane and environmental. Plants are the city’s symbiotic allies—an extra set of lungs to help us breath and continue growing.

Imagine if at the office you could take five minutes to walk outside onto a small field basking in the sun. A space to think and develop a relationship with some part of nature.

The good news is that Bloomberg’s PlaNYC initiative offers a tax abatement to green roof property owners for up to $150,000.

Green roofs can contribute to LEED certification as well—by protecting or restoring habitats, maximizing open space, storm-water quality control, reducing the heat island effect, and increasing water efficiency.

Green roofs support biodiversity by providing a habitat for native plants, invertebrates, birds and other animals.

Small-scale, local food production is also possible with green roofs—creating opportunities for urban communities to partake in healthy, in-season produce.

Green roofs do require maintenance, especially if you expect to grow food on them. But that’s sort of the point—taking time to slow down. If “getting lost” in nature sounds like a waste of time, you can look it as a chance to recharge your battery.

Much of the health benefits of green roofs are rooted in aesthetics. Green roofs give us something beautiful to look at and meditate on. They also reduce noise pollution, which is a major contributor of urban stress.

Evidence shows that simply being around plants leads to lower blood pressure, increased attentiveness, productivity and job satisfaction, lower anxiety, and improved wellbeing. Green roofs can serve as collective spaces for individuals to cooperate and work in, while enjoying the beauty of nature together.

The mental state induced by working with plants has deep evolutionary roots. Tending plants can help the mind form a conscious relationship of stewardship to the environment.

At some level, green roofs might be viewed as a built-in escape mechanism. For me, they are a welcome refuge from the stress, anxiety, and noise of the city.

There is no single or obvious solution to designing sustainable cities. Green roofs may work well in some places, but they are certainly not a fix-all for the environmental shift that we are now experiencing.

However, if designed well, green roofs can support biodiversity, reduce the energy use of buildings, and help mitigate the effects of climate change. Their design and implementation can positively influence how city dwellers interact with and are conscious of their environment.

Austin Arrington

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